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ILAR Journal V41(3) 2000
Mouse Behavioral Models in Biomedical Research

Book Review

Systematic Approach to Evaluation of Mouse Mutations
Edited by John P. Sundberg and Dawnalyn Boggess
ISBN 0-8493-1905-6 CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida
(Telephone: 800-272-7737, Fax: 800-374-3401),
1999, 199 pp., $99.95, hardbound

This useful and timely book will find an appreciative audience among researchers who want to begin working with mouse mutants and either have established their own small mouse colonies or wish to do so. This volume in many ways is a primer, which covers many fundamentals. It is edited by a mouse pathologist from The Jackson Laboratory and his assistant. The contributing authors of the 13 chapters are experts in their fields. Most of them work at The Jackson Laboratory, but others work elsewhere, including France.

One of the most useful chapters, essentially the core of the book, deals with necropsy methods for the mouse. It is a detailed account for the neophyte of what to look at and how to do it. Dr. Sundberg carefully describes each step of the preparations and the preliminary examination of the animal. He provides many useful suggestions on how to perform the different dissections and how to prepare each sample for the histology laboratory. The chapter is illustrated with Ingrid Sundberg's sketches, which help the reader understand the instructions. Immediately following is a short chapter on photography. After a discussion of needed equipment, there are tips on how to photograph live mice as well as necropsy specimens. The advice offered in this chapter on such issues as background color could help a new experimenter avoid much trial and error.

The book begins with four chapters on the fundamentals of establishing and running a colony. The first chapter is basically a description of how to recognize phenotypic deviation and breed mice carrying the phenotype of interest. This chapter is also used as a vehicle to describe in great detail how to perform ovary transplants. The next chapter on the genotypic analysis of a new trait is basic but covers the subject quite well. A chapter on computerized colony management relates to criteria for consideration in managing any colony, although the latter part of the chapter focuses on a new commercial product (Colony^TM), which is not necessarily directly useful to the new user. The fourth chapter in this set deals with medical record keeping, an important element that requires careful setup. Related to these first four chapters is chapter seven, which discusses comparative pathology and criteria for mouse models of human disease.

There are five chapters on techniques to evaluate mutants beyond the initial histologic studies on necropsy samples. These chapters include discussions of kinetics and morphometrics, electron microscopy, immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence, and in situ hybridization with both radiolabeled and nonradiolabeled cDNA probes. Relatively detailed instructions are provided, and the reader is also given a brief background and hints on data analysis. Like all the chapters in the book, they contain useful references, sometimes to primary research papers but often to more specialized texts in the area that can inform the reader about more advanced uses of the techniques. The book ends with a description of current repositories of mouse mutants as well as recombinant and congenic strains.

The depth of treatment of the assorted topics is quite variable. Clearly the emphasis is on the analysis of pathologic states, which is understandable inasmuch as the senior editor is a pathologist. However, the book contains many useful nuggets of information and much detailed direction in specific areas. It should be a useful addition to the library of any laboratory beginning to work with mouse models.